Category Archives: Non-Virginia

Scientists at the European Commission’s Joint Research Center in Ispra, Italy, and engineers at Google have developed the Global Surface Water Explorer, an online tool that uses satellite images to show changes in water bodies from 1986 to 2015. The project Web site is https://global-surface-water.appspot.com/. A short description of the project, with several examples (including Lake Mead in Arizona), is available in a New York Times article, Mapping Three Decades of Global Water Change, 12/9/16.

Here are some water-related meetings in the United States, Canada, and other countries in coming months, followed by notes for events that recur annually, listed by the month the event typically occurs.

This post is updated as the Virginia Water Resources Research Center learns of new events and a new version is re-posted at least quarterly. If you would like an event added, please send basic information (date, location, event title, event organizer, Web site, and contact information) to water@vt.edu with subject line: For Water Central Editor.

Some of the information for this edition was provided by the Virginia Water Monitoring Council (VWMC), supported in part by grants from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality’s Citizen Monitoring Grant Program and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency through the Virginia Department of Health. More information about the VWMC is available online at http://www.vwmc.vwrrc.vt.edu/.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, W. Va. (shown here in Sep. 2014) annually hosts many water-related meetings, including the Chesapeake Watershed Forum each September.

Feb. 14-16, 2017, Sydney, Australia: 11th International Water Association Symposium on Tastes, Odors, and Algal Toxins in Water. Organized by the University of New South Wales. More information: http://www.iwatando2017.org/; e-mail: acn@unsw.edu.au.

Oct. 12-13, 2017, National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, West Va.: 2017 Mid-Atlantic Regional Water Conference. Hosted by the West Virginia Water Research Institute (at West Virginia University), in collaboration with the Delaware Water Resources Center (at the University of Delaware), the Pennsylvania Water Resources Research Center (at Penn State), and the Virginia Water Resources Research Center (at Virginia Tech). Abstracts for presentation proposals due March 27, 2017. More information: visit http://midatlanticwrc.org/, or email: wvwaterconference@mail.wvu.edu.

Annually Recurring Events

(Shown is the month(s) each year when the event is normally held; specific dates change each year, and locations may change.)

February, Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting. More information: http://meetings.aaas.org/.

February, even years (next 2018): Ocean Sciences Meeting. Organized by the American Geophysical Union, the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography, and the Oceanography Society. More information: http://osm.agu.org/2016/.

April, Rapid City, S.D.: Western South Dakota Hydrology Meeting. Organized by the U.S. Geological Survey’s South Dakota Water Science Center and several partners. More information: http://sd.water.usgs.gov/WSDconf/; Janet Carter, (605) 394-3215 or jmcarter@usgs.gov.

May or Jun.: annual Congress of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society. More information: http://congress.cmos.ca/.

June: Annual conference of the Universities Council on Water Resources (UCOWR), the National Institutes for Water Resources (NIWR), and the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI). More information: http://ucowr.org/conferences; or contact UCOWR at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, (618) 536-7571 or ucowr@siu.edu.

If you’re going to be near Boston, Mass., in mid-January 2017, and you’re interested in what the incoming Trump Administration may mean for water infrastructure, policy, and technology, here’s an event of interest:

Since mid-summer 2016, areas around Atlanta, Georgia, have been in “severe, ” “extreme,” or “exceptional” drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor’s weekly reports. The Drought Monitor (produced at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and available online at http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/) identifies five levels of dry conditions: D0 = abnormally dry; D1 = moderate drought; D2 = severe drought; D3 = extreme drought; D4 = exceptional drought. For example, the July 5, 2016, report categorized about 28 percent of the Peach State (concentrated in the northern section) in severe drought and about 7 percent in extreme drought, with an estimated 6.7 million people n drought-affected areas. In the Drought Monitor report for November 22, 2016, the percentages for Georgia were 67.8 percent in severe or worse drought, 56.6 percent in extreme or worse drought, and 33.8 percent in exceptional drought. Below are the November 22 and July 5 Drought Monitor maps and tables of statistics for Georgia.

The drought around Atlanta is part of a much larger area of severe (or worse) drought in the southeastern United States, centered over Alabama and Georgia. That region has had areas categorized by the Drought Monitor as in severe (or worse) drought since the week of May 31, 2016. Shown below is the Drought Monitor’s Southeast Region map and statistics chart for November 22, 2016.

Some News Media Accounts of Drought in the Atlanta Area and Other Parts of the Southeast in 2016

On March 22, 2016, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a four-year, $10 million grant for research on water challenges in the region of the Ogallala Aquifer, a groundwater source providing domestic and agricultural water in several Midwestern and Great Plains states. The grant will be coordinated by Colorado State University and also involves Kansas State University, the University of Nebraska, New Mexico State University, Oklahoma State University, Texas A&M University, and Texas Tech University. For more information, please see “Ogallala Aquifer is Focus of New USDA-funded Research Project,” in the Spring 2016 issue of Water Current (Vol. 48, No. 2) from the Nebraska Water Center, online at http://unlcms.unl.edu/ianr/water-for-food/nebraska-water-center/water-current; or USDA Awards $8.5 Million to Improve Communities’ Water Sources, USDA News Release, 3/22/16.

“Climate Smart Agriculture” is the theme of the March/April 2016 issue of Colorado Water, from the Colorado State University (CSU) Water Center and the Colorado Water Institute.

Much of the 40-page newsletter focuses on the Rocky Mountain State, but several articles discuss nationwide and worldwide aspects of climate change, energy use, and their connections to agriculture. Of particular value in this broader scope are “Global and Local Climate Change: What We Know and Expect”; “Greenhouse Gases and Agriculture”; “Climate Smart Agriculture”; “Looking at Climate Change and Global Food Security”; “Solving the Climate Change Riddle: Reasons for Optimism”; and the list of resources for further reading.

On December 2, 2016, at Maritime Institute, North Linthicum, Md., the Maryland Water Monitoring Council will hold its 22th annual conference. This year’s theme is “A River Runs Through It – Strengthening Networks and Connections.” Themes for individual sessions include Climate Change, Sustainable Bay Fisheries, Citizen Science, Stream Restoration Monitoring, Community Partners, Blue-green Algae, National Aquatic Resource Surveys, Road Salt, and the Air-Water Interface. October 19 is the deadline to submit an abstract for a proposed presentation. For more information, visit http://dnr2.maryland.gov/streams/Pages/MWMC/conference.aspx; or contact Dan Boward at dboward@dnr.state.md.us or (410) 260-8605.